One of the things that makes Disc so different and somewhat more difficult than other healers is how it heals. That is that everything that moves health bars, particularly multiple bars at once are all cooldowns and somewhat long ones at that.
So where other healers can move health bars with WG every 10 seconds, or with spammable AoE heals like Chain Heal, Discs instead have 1 button every 20 seconds and another every 30 seconds (SCov if talented) to heal up multiple health bars at once and everything other than that is via Atonement which again is only viable with damage spells that are also on CD’s (Schism/MB/buffed Penance/Mindbender).
So the reason that everyone takes SCov isn’t so much because it’s a strong CD but because it’s another CD and going from 3 every minute to 5 is a huge gain even if it’s only a 160% spell power healing GCD. Because without SCov you’re going to be spending that GCD trying to AoE heal with Smite instead.
I e always used it, even pre-buff.
Pre buff it was more or less a TE activator and I would use it to initiate some big burst aoe heals. Scov+halo.
Post buff I use it on CD for damage.
I disagree here actually. It might have been why they were taking it last patch, but not now.
I think people take it because it’s a strong CD now. I certainly wasn’t taking it last patch, because it didn’t make a lot of sense to for how I was playing. And I saw more than one disc priest in the +20 range just skipping Scov in favor of more direct healing.
Now we’ve got so much that we can fit in the window (and the window is active for 15 seconds). That extra time lets us fit two penance casts (which are now dark reprimand) and an extra mind blast. It’s just way more healing than it was before, but it’s also 50% uptime if you want it.
In fact, Scov (and to a lesser extent new mind blast) is so good I’ve almost stopped using rapture.
Shadow covenant has 2 uses First is increasing shadow damage and turning penance into dark reprimand, to benefit from the increased atonement healing on shadow spells. In this way and after applying atonement penance becomes a huge aoe healing spell and mind blast, mindgames and SWD become strong healing and damaging spells specially paired with schism.
The second one is to benefit from both spell schools to be able to continue healing in pvp. People know the importance of penance and will often kick it. If they kick dark reprimand you will be out of the shadow school but still can use holy spells, so you can usually just sit and spam flash heals in people’s faces and they cant do anything about it other than stun you. The reverse is also true, if they kick as holy you can still dark reprimand for healing or damage.